Why is this column so negative? Sadly, it needs to be

A physician acquaintance once took me to task for how negative this column is. He had read some of my other work on various topics and was pleased with the upbeat and optimistic tone.

Why, he wondered, was I so eager to debunk things in this newspaper column? Why not write about good news?

Since I think highly of this person's opinion, I was rather depressed. Why did the column come across so badly to this discerning reader?

Finally, I decided: too bad. This column debunks things in medicine much of the time because that is the only way to serve its main purpose. That is to share with readers what we in medicine talk about among ourselves, or at least would talk about -- if we were doing our jobs.

If you listen to the network news, you get the impression all medical news is good. The typical health story on TV is a "gee whiz" about a new medical advance that promises to save lives. In the first column I wrote, I suggested all such news items ought to have a "truth bar" below the main picture. It would contain the numbers showing how many "breakthroughs" in previous gee-whiz news stories actually had led to proven, effective treatments for real patients.

If such a thing were to exist, the percentage on the truth bar would be low. That is the nature of medical research. The human body is extremely complicated. No treatment does just one thing to the body. It is a rare treatment that does only a few good things and no bad things. Yet when we learn of any new medical possibility, our high hopes almost always get the better of our skepticism.

"That sounds really logical," we say. "Surely it just has to work."

Scientists who discover what doesn't work in medicine ought to be our heroes. Without them, thousands or even millions of patients would have suffered from horrible side effects, or at best, wasted a lot of money on worthless treatment.

So when I write negative, debunking columns, all I am doing is sharing the real inside scoop on most medical research.

I'm sorry if that bothers my friend.

Dr. Howard Brody is director of the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston.